Search This Blog

31 October 2009

The newly adopted international symbol for hazardous ionizing radiation.

The problem with designing an effective symbol is that some of the Hot Stuff has a half-life so long -- 250,000 years or more -- that it requires a symbol which will be clearly understood long after everybody's forgotten how to read English or German or French or Chinese or Japanese. So you need a picture that will tell ANYBODY to turn around and get the fuck out of there as fast as possible.

The problem with the Skull & Crossbones by itself is that little kids think it's a fun symbol that means pirates, so they were ending up in hospital emergency rooms from drinking the Pirate Fun Juice they found in bottles stored under the sink. Now toxic household chemicals use the "Mister Yuck" symbol, a green, sick-looking Frowny Face.

The traditional "trefoil" symbol for ioning radiation danger was tested by itself, and many children thought it was a non-threatening symbol for a propeller -- inviting rather than alarming.

The "trefoil" symbol dates from the first postwar wave of growth of the nuclear power industry in North America and Europe, and reflects an intentional industry desire not to scare the crap out of everybody who sees it. In other words, it was designed to convey Nothing. To understand it requires training, education, pre-familiarity. For warning untrained people about nearby invisible hazards, it was always useless. It could just as easily be inviting people in for free ice cream.

Very sad and troubling e-mail today from Leo. The Garage & Basement community is in shock and mourning.

Yellowcake is a common powder ore compound, a mined source of uranium -- not particularly dangerous unless you sleep on a ton of it every night for a week, but small amounts are great for making lab gizmos go Beep-Beep.

Unfortunately, we had to remove your listing because the following information violates our policy:

Hazardous or dangerous goods (such as explosives, radioactive materials, flammable gases, liquids and solids, and toxic substances) may pose a danger to health, safety, or property while being transported. Many hazardous goods cannot be shipped through the mail or commercial carriers at all.

Click map for larger.Haradheere is a coastal town northeast of Mogadishu.

Thomson Reuters (UK newswire)Friday 30 October 2009

Somali pirates ask $7,000,000to free UK yachting couple

LONDON, Oct 30 (Reuters) --Somali pirates have demanded a $7,000,000 ransom for a British couple captured on their yacht in the Indian Ocean, according to a phone call from a man purporting to be a member of the gang broadcast by the BBC on Friday.

Gunmen kidnapped Paul and Rachel Chandler, both in their 50s, last Friday while they sailed in international waters north of the Seychelles and took them to the Somali coast.

"We only need a little amount of $7,000,000," the BBC quoted the unnamed caller as saying. "If they do not harm us, we will not harm them."

Pirates have plagued busy shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia for several years. Foreign warships from 16 nations are patrolling the area to try and prevent hijacks, but the sea gangs are now hunting for ships far into the Indian Ocean.

A Foreign Office spokesman in London said the British government was aware of the reported ransom demand but could not confirm its authenticity.

In a tearful phone call to her brother Stephen Collett, Rachel Chandler said that they were coping with the pressure and their captors had given them food and water.

"Please don't worry about us, we are managing," she said, according to a recording of the conversation shown on Britain's ITV News. "Thank you for everything you are doing. We are safe."

A pirate called Hassan told Reuters by telephone from the coastal town of Haradheere earlier this week that the gang was holding the couple on a hijacked Singaporean container ship.

"After we understood the British navy might attack us, we took the hostages off the yacht into the Singaporean ship to bring them safely here," he said.

The couple's niece Leah Mickleborough told the BBC that the family was aware of the ransom demand report and that they would "look into it".

The pirate gangs -- some made up of former fisherman angered by the presence of foreign fishing fleets in Somali waters -- and their backers within Somalia and abroad have made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms.

28 October 2009

Matthew Hoh is a former US Marine combat officer in Iraq, and a high-ranking and praised civilian official for the US civil initiative in Afghanistan. Hoh just resigned from his field position in rural Afghanistan with the US State Department, with the above letter explaining his reasons.

Here's a long, well-dimensioned Washington Post story by Karen DeYoungabout Hoh's journey, as a Marine and a State Department official specializing in civil engineering, to his final decision to end his participation with the American civil-military program in Afghanistan.

We've moved a bit too far west to get good reception of some of my favorite college radio stations, so I'm getting their web streams, and you can, too.

A few minutes ago -- about 02:00 -- I went outside and an oppossum scurried around in the yard from the bushes to beneath a car.

Monday morning the Generac propane-fueled emergency electric generator was finally installed and tested. Now every Monday morning it will automatically power up and go through a 15-minute self-test. If everything's fine, it goes back to sleep for a week. If something's wrong, we have four or five business days to call the electrician and get it fixed.

Last winter an Epic Ice Storm knocked out everybody's electricity for 8 days. The electrician says there've been LOTS of inquiries about the amazing Generac. You want propane because propane is easy and safe to store. Gasoline-fueled generators are a big safety headache. It takes a lot of gasoline to get your house through three or four days without electricity, to keep the fridge and the electric well pump running, and some lights.

We also use a wood stove now. We have moved sideways along the Fossil Fuel Infrastructure to rural and farm Propane, and backwards a century to logs. Lots of Yartzeit candles around on the first floor -- they make the best and safest emergency candles, you can leave them burning all night without burning down the house, if you don't mind Hebrew prayers for the dead all over the living room. They're available at every supermarket.

God Bless the inventor of 4-wheel drive. Who was that? Willys and the World War II Jeep? Who invented 4-wheel drive?

The Map has now been tested on two sets of visitors who've never been around here before. The first made it fine, but the others got lost, so we have clarified some landmarks and glitzed it up with William Morris and Sinbad and The Old Man of the Sea. If you follow the new map carefully you will probably not be surrounded by wolves or cannibals.

It's bow-hunting season, wear a safety-orange hat and do not act like a moose or a deer. We still haven't posted our NO HUNTING signs.

If you come visit, I am not recommending you stop at the Castaways, it's just an important landmark to find the Whately Inn and the country shortcut to Williamsburg. Locals call it The Whately Ballet.

The truck-stop diner a mile north of the Castaways has top-notch food, free wi-fi, is lots of fun 24/7, and also will rent you a shower with a towel for $1.

The Whately Inn is one of the finest restaurants I've ever eaten at, and will whomp you in the face with the very best ye Olde New Englande Countrie Inne experience.

Saturday is Halloween! Place your bets! How many Trick Or Treater kids will walk a mile or more through the woods, dodging coyotes and bears, for our candy?

20 October 2009

The Vleeptron Institute for Real Good Earth Art (VIRGEA) would be grateful if any reader knew for which project or publication William Morris carved this illustration. Dover released this wonderful book and CD with about 300 exquisite Morris images, but forgot to say which is which. And I sure as heck don't know.Leave a comment, help Vleeptron, show what a high-class lady or guy you are.

18 October 2009

The website I filched this from was a scholarly site which shotgunned this beautiful poem full of [3] and [9] and line numbers

1........Margaret, are you grieving2........Over Goldengrove unleaving?345........etc.

... which is such a rude thing to do to a fine poet that I wrote the website professor and complained. He defended the annotation scheme as absolutely necessary to truly understand the poem and the poet.

I don't think the professor and I are ever going to reach any kind of understanding. He thinks I'm an unwashed knuckledragger, and I think he's an effete arrogant snoot who likes to abuse poems amd long-dead poets who can no longer defend their work from such ignorant assaults.

I think he's at the University of Toronto, if it's convenient for any reader to run into him on a speeding bicycle -- not kill him, just hospitalize him for a few days to make him think more clearly about how to treat literature -- I'd be grateful.

So the Vleeptron Ministry of Poems and Limericks (VMPL) reproduces "Spring and Fall / to a young child" without blasting it full of holes by numerical and dingbat pellets from the Higher Realms of Academe, whose mission it is to stand between the poet and the reader and make things unecessarily difficult, obscure and confusing.

Since the Protestant upheaval of King Henry VIII and the centuries of bloody strife, war and conflict that followed, the Catholic voice of England's politics and literature has, often literally, gone underground, and what continued of it was often coded or presented as hidden allegory. Recent scholarship and interpretation suggests that Shakespeare clung to his childhood Catholicism, and his work is imbedded with hushed reverence, at a time when it was very risky for a prominent Englishman to be suspected of Catholic sympathies.

Though England has a gazillion Catholics and the right of Catholics to worship openly was restored centuries ago, only in our time might it be accurate to say that Catholics are the fully legal equals of Protestants in legal rights, citizenship and opportunity.

I think Protestants in line for the throne are still forbidden from marrying Catholics, or their issue cannot inherit the throne, but I've heard a buzz that Parliament is considering ending this ancient discrimination -- probably retaining "safeguards" to prevent the coronation of a Catholic. Average and ruling-class England is still considerably Anti-Papist, though the actual assassinations, executions, banishments and imprisonments have given way to dirty slurs and crude Music Hall and TV skits and theatricals.

I think Gerard Manley Hopkins arrived at Oxford a Protestant -- probably Church of England (Anglican / Episcopalian) -- but was swept up by Cardinal John Henry Newman's intellectual revival of Catholicism just at the moment he began writing his enormously powerful poems.

After Oxford Hopkins took the vows of a Catholic priest wishing a lifetime serving the poorest slumdwellers of England's huge industrial cities, and gave up his youthful poetry, which he considered an unworthy idle hobby, until his talent was brought to the attention of his bishop, who commanded Hopkins to continue writing his remarkable poetry. We are greatly indebted to this poetry-loving bishop.

Hopkins' poems are not of his time, not Victorian, not the themes or the techniques of his contemporary English poets. In particular he fled from the Victorian poets' florid, synthetically antique, overblown language and tried to restore the simple, blunt, direct vocabulary and rhyme schemes of pre-medieval Anglo-Saxon poetry (or what we know of what little has survived). This is a particularly different kind of English from modern English, because the Norman Conquest (1066) intervened and imposed about three centuries of Court French on the native language. Hopkins writes poems to reflect the pre-Norman influence on the language; his poems are intended to bring back the sound and impact of English in 850 A.D., and particularly its tools for expressing spiritual matters.

Ordinary words spelled with odd diacritical marks

What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:

are Hopkins' way of guiding pronunciation and rhyme back to 850 A.D., a scheme he called Sprung Rhythm. Not every critic has been generous or tolerant of this unique experiment in modern poetry; some write Hopkins off as a notable and talented literary dead end without subsequent influence on English poetry. If I had the nerve to write more poems, I would certainly credit Hopkins with influencing me.

But Hopkins universally is given prominent space and honor in every important collection of English 19th-century poetry. He is too good to be ignored, he is too good to be forgotten or ever declared out of style and unimportant. He grabbed onto this great language ferociously and with deep skills to manipulate its special powers, and did this in a century otherwise not very great for English poetry.

I haven't looked up a single fact on Wikipedia, so please feel free to find all kinds of Errors and Mistakes in this introduction, and Leave a Comment to set me straight. I've tossed in the Professor's copious footnotes, although I don't think any thoughtful, intelligent human being -- even little girls named Margaret -- needs them to feel what Hopkins wished readers to feel.

It's topical because at this moment, the trees surrounding our new house in the forests of Western Massachusetts are unleaving, explosively and magnificently, but threatening a long dark cold bleakness ahead.

~ ~ ~

Spring and Fall

to a young child

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Margaret, are you grievingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leaves, like the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! as the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy & by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you wíll weep & know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sorrow's springs are the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:It is the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for.

~ ~ ~

Notes

1] Hopkins wrote this poem as he walked from Lydiate to the train for Liverpool (White). He wrote Robert Bridges that it was "a little piece composed since I began this letter [Sept. 5], not founded on any real incident. I am not well satisfied with it" (Letters, I, 109).

2] Goldengrove: capitalized, as a place name, perhaps the real Golden Grove, Carmarthenshire (Wales), about three hours south of Liverpool, the estate of Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), an Anglican bishop who wrote a manual of daily prayers, The Golden Grove (1655). unleaving: letting fall its leaves, "unleafing." There may be a play on the sense, "not departing from" (i.e., that Margaret must stay in Goldengrove in its present state).

4] fresh: newly experienced, youthful.

6] colder: with less emotion.

8] wanwood leafmeal: dark forest (Old English "wann"; possibly our "wan," `pale and tired'), with all its leaves on the ground, "piecemeal."

11] springs: origins; playing on tears (cf. 9 "weep"). the same: all one.

13] ghóst: soul.

Commentary by Ian Lancashire (2002/9/9)

A little girl named Margaret cries over the lovely golden leaves of the autumn forest, all fallen to the ground; and she asks the speaker why they are shed. Like many children, she gets upset easily when things are not as she would have them and is ever full of questions for explanations. She willfully cries and cries, insisting, the speaker says, on knowing "why" (9). Parents and teachers usually answer these questions patiently, sympathetically. Leaves fall because of the seasons. It is just "Spring and Fall" and the leaves will come back next year, so that there is no reason to cry, is there? This speaker, unlike older people who talk down to children in a well-meaning, comforting way, does not tell her that she cries without cause. He does not bring comfort; he tries not to treat her as a child at all. Although we may not be meant to know who the speaker is, we all do because Hopkins signed his name to the poem. Of course he was a Catholic priest who routinely took confessions and gave absolution, baptized and pronounced the last rites, administered mass and marriage, and above all taught his parishioners about life in the context of God's eternity. Margaret came to the wrong person if she hoped for sympathy. She received a lesson instead.

"Spring and Fall" is not about the seasons, or even about Golden Grove, Bishop Jeremy Taylor's well-known home in Wales, though the prayer book that he published in 1655 and that Hopkins may have remembered hints at what the poem does concern. The Spring of the poem's title is the source of all tears, "Sorrow's springs" (11), and that source is the "Fall" of Man: original sin and the punishments meted out to Adam, Eve, and their descendents for their eating of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. "Goldengrove unleaving" is the world infected with "the blight man was born for" (14); it is, as John Milton said, "paradise lost." All sorrows, whether for leaves or "the things of man" (3), have their origin in that primal event described in Genesis and, according to the New Testament, paid for by God's son Jesus at his crucifixion and death. The seasons run parallel to the life and death of every man. They result from the same blanket, divinely ordained curse pronounced on Adam and Eve in Eden by which everything in the human world suffered. Hopkins uses the term "blight" for its associations with a disease afflicting crops and the natural world for this reason.

Hearing Margaret's heartfelt grief at the fallen leaves, and taking her plea for an explanation seriously, Hopkins' speaker tells her of a calamity that, over time, will inure her to all other losses. "It is Margaret," herself cursed, whom she mourns for. All "sights," even were they to encompass entire "worlds," fade into insignificance in comparison to what humanity intuits but never explicitly verbalizes or even conceptualizes. "What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed", is something felt as an emotion and sensed as a spirit or soul, because the soul, unlike the body, was thought immortal, generated by God from a world very unlike our own. The proper name "Margaret" means a pearl, which is symbolically the New Testament's pearl of great price, that is, the soul. Margaret grieves because of an intuition that comes naturally to someone named as she is.

Though having just one line more than a sonnet, Hopkins' "Spring and Fall" draws on two poetic forms from very different traditions: children's sing-song, and the four-stress Old English alliterating line. The six double rhymes (1-6, 10-15), of which the second is a weakly-stressed syllable (except at 10-11), give the verse a lilting, singable character, not unlike nursery rhymes. For example, the last couplet, "born for" and "mourn for" (14-15), imposes on the somber thought a music found usually in light verse, not ode, elegy, or complaint. The one triplet, at lines 7-9 (which marks a transition between Margaret's problem and its explanation), features internal rhymes on "sights" and "sigh," "by" and "sigh", and "Though" and "know", that together enhance this child-like easiness. Simple idioms like "can you?" (4), "the heart grows older" (5), "By & by" (7), and "no matter" (10) belong to a poem addressed, like any nursery rhyme, to a "child" (10) who may be crying.

Old English prosody builds on a line with two two-stress half-lines of indeterminate length (that is, the number of syllables is not fixed) in which the stressed terms alliterate. Here, stresses in lines 1-2 and 13 fall on "g"-words, lines 4 and 6 on "c"-words, lines 8-9 on "w"-words, lines 7 and 11 on "s"-words, and so on. This technique influenced Hopkins' conception of "sprung rhythm" and explains why he placed stress marks on some words, such as "will" in line 9. Note how Hopkins' lines have a caesural pause in their middle: this break turns them into paired half-lines. His use of compound words in "wanwood leafmeal", termed "kennings" in Old English, also harks back to its poetics; and so do words lacking determiners in lines 12-13, "mouth", "mind", "heart", and "ghost." Prosodic effects like these estrange his writing from modern speech and lend it a staccato, urgent energy that goes lacking in much Victorian poetry.

The title "Spring and Fall" nicely conveys the metrical effects Hopkins achieves in yoking Old English two-stress half-lines with double rhymes ending on weak syllables.

Finally, although Hopkins may have had little use for syllable-counting in his theory of sprung rhythm, he clearly employs variations in line-length to good effect here. The poem breaks into two parts, the speaker's recognition of Margaret's grief at lines 1-8, and his explanation for that sorrow at lines 9-15. The first eight lines consist of four sentences, each with two lines, a couplet, having 7 and then 8 syllables. The pattern is a regular 7, 8, 7, 8, 7, 8, 7, and 8 syllables. Three of these couplets also close with strong terminal punctuation on the second line, the one with 8 syllables. The final seven lines follow a more disordered pattern, with 8, 7, 6, 8, 6, 8, and 8 syllables. This irregularity expresses the strong feelings of the speaker. Note that in every instance the 8-syllable lines convey the tenets that he teaches. Like stressed alliterative verse, line-lengths communicate the drama of thought and feeling in the speaker's mind.

Hopkins' sonnets, alternately the bleakest ("No worst, there is none") and most exalting ("God's Grandeur") in English, sometimes give vent to his frustration as a poet whose writings went unpublished and unrecognized in his lifetime. If he remembered Taylor's "The Golden Grove," the collection of prayers, "Spring and Fall" may have had a private meaning for Hopkins. The word "leaves" connotes "pages" too. The poem's second last couplet, "Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed / What h?art h?ard of, gh?st gu?ssed" (12-13), expresses deep skepticism about whether human language and thought can tell us what we too need to know. Margaret's "fresh thoughts", caring for "Leaves, like the things of man" (3-4), will give way to a heart that intuits what cannot be put into words. If the "unleaving" of Goldengrove connotes the loss of poetry, possibly that does not matter much.

12 October 2009

Then, all of a sudden, the end came. The lion's head fell forward on the crocodile's back, and with an awful groan he died, and the crocodile, after standing for a minute motionless, slowly rolled over on to his side, his jaws still fixed across the carcase of the lion, which, we afterwards found, he had bitten almost in halves.

This duel to the death was a wonderful and a shocking sight, and one that I suppose few men have seen—and thus it ended.

When it was all over, leaving Mahomed to keep a look out, we managed to spend the rest of the night as quietly as the mosquitoes would allow.

VI

AN EARLY CHRISTIAN CEREMONY

Next morning, at the earliest light of dawn, we rose, performed such ablutions as circumstances would allow, and generally made ready to start. I am bound to say that when there was sufficient light to enable us to see each other's faces I, for one, burst out into a roar of laughter. Job's fat and comfortable countenance was swollen out to nearly twice its natural size from mosquito bites, and Leo's condition was not much better. Indeed, of the three I had come off much the best, probably owing to the toughness of my dark skin, and to the fact that a good deal of it was covered by hair, for since we had started from England I had allowed my naturally luxuriant beard to grow at its own sweet will. But the other two were, comparatively speaking, clean shaved, which of course gave the enemy a larger extent of open country to operate on, though in Mahomed's case the mosquitoes, recognising the taste of a true believer, would not touch him at any price. How often, I wonder, during the next week or so did we wish that we were flavoured like an Arab!

By the time that we had done laughing as heartily as our swollen lips would allow, it was daylight, and the morning breeze was coming up from the sea, cutting lanes through the dense marsh mists, and here and there rolling them before it in great balls of fleecy vapour. So we set our sail, and having first taken a look at the two dead lions and the alligator, which we were of course unable to skin, being destitute of means of curing the pelts, we started, and, sailing through the lagoon, followed the course of the river on the farther side. At midday, when the breeze dropped, we were fortunate enough to find a convenient piece of dry land on which to camp and light a fire, and here we cooked two wild-ducks and some of the waterbuck's flesh—not in a very appetising way, it is true, but still sufficiently. The rest of the buck's flesh we cut into strips and hung in the sun to dry into "biltong," as, I believe, the South African Dutch call flesh thus prepared. On this welcome patch of dry land we stopped till the following dawn, and, as before, spent the night in warfare with the mosquitoes, but without other troubles. The next day or two passed in similar fashion, and without noticeable adventures, except that we shot a specimen of a peculiarly graceful hornless buck, and saw many varieties of water-lily in full bloom, some of them blue and of exquisite beauty, though few of the flowers were perfect, owing to the prevalence of a white water-maggot with a green head that fed upon them.

It was on the fifth day of our journey, when we had travelled, so far as we could reckon, about one hundred and thirty-five to a hundred and forty miles westwards from the coast, that the first event of any real importance occurred. On that morning the usual wind failed us about eleven o'clock, and after pulling a little way we were forced to halt, more or less exhausted, at what appeared to be the junction of our stream with another of a uniform width of about fifty feet. Some trees grew near at hand—the only trees in all this country were along the banks of the river, and under these we rested, and then, the land being fairly dry just here, walked a little way along the edge of the river to prospect, and shoot a few waterfowl for food. Before we had gone fifty yards we perceived that all hopes of getting further up the stream in the whale-boat were at an end, for not two hundred yards above where we had stopped were a succession of shallows and mudbanks, with not six inches of water over them. It was a watery cul de sac.

Turning back, we walked some way along the banks of the other river, and soon came to the conclusion, from various indications, that it was not a river at all, but an ancient canal, like the one which is to be seen above Mombasa, on the Zanzibar coast, connecting the Tana River with the Ozy, in such a way as to enable the shipping coming down the Tana to cross to the Ozy, and reach the sea by it, and thus avoid the very dangerous bar that blocks the mouth of the Tana. The canal before us had evidently been dug out by man at some remote period of the world's history, and the results of his digging still remained in the shape of the raised banks that had no doubt once formed towing-paths. Except here and there, where they had been hollowed out by the water or fallen in, these banks of stiff binding clay were at a uniform distance from each other, and the depth of the stream also appeared to be uniform. Current there was little or none, and, as a consequence, the surface of the canal was choked with vegetable growth, intersected by little paths of clear water, made, I suppose, by the constant passage of waterfowl, iguanas, and other vermin. Now, as it was evident that we could not proceed up the river, it became equally evident that we must either try the canal or else return to the sea. We could not stop where we were, to be baked by the sun and eaten up by the mosquitoes, till we died of fever in that dreary marsh.

"Well, I suppose that we must try it," I said; and the others assented in their various ways—Leo, as though it were the best joke in the world; Job, in respectful disgust; and Mahomed, with an invocation to the Prophet, and a comprehensive curse upon all unbelievers and their ways of thought and travel.

Accordingly, as soon as the sun got low, having little or nothing more to hope for from our friendly wind, we started. For the first hour or so we managed to row the boat, though with great labour; but after that the weeds got too thick to allow of it, and we were obliged to resort to the primitive and most exhausting resource of towing her. For two hours we laboured, Mahomed, Job, and I, who was supposed to be strong enough to pull against the two of them, on the bank, while Leo sat in the bow of the boat, and brushed away the weeds which collected round the cutwater with Mahomed's sword. At dark we halted for some hours to rest and enjoy the mosquitoes, but about midnight we went on again, taking advantage of the comparative cool of the night. At dawn we rested for three hours, and then started once more, and laboured on till about ten o'clock, when a thunderstorm, accompanied by a deluge of rain, overtook us, and we spent the next six hours practically under water.

I do not know that there is any necessity for me to describe the next four days of our voyage in detail, further than to say that they were, on the whole, the most miserable that I ever spent in my life, forming one monotonous record of heavy labour, heat, misery, and mosquitoes. All that dreary way we passed through a region of almost endless swamp, and I can only attribute our escape from fever and death to the constant doses of quinine and purgatives which we took, and the unceasing toil which we were forced to undergo. On the third day of our journey up the canal we had sighted a round hill that loomed dimly through the vapours of the marsh, and on the evening of the fourth night, when we camped, this hill seemed to be within five-and-twenty or thirty miles of us. We were by now utterly exhausted, and felt as though our blistered hands could not pull the boat a yard farther, and that the best thing that we could do would be to lie down and die in that dreadful wilderness of swamp. It was an awful position, and one in which I trust no other white man will ever be placed; and as I threw myself down in the boat to sleep the sleep of utter exhaustion, I bitterly cursed my folly in ever having been a party to such a mad undertaking, which could, I saw, only end in our death in this ghastly land. I thought, I remember, as I slowly sank into a doze, of what the appearance of the boat and her unhappy crew would be in two or three months' time from that night. There she would lie, with gaping seams and half filled with fœtid water, which, when the mist-laden wind stirred her, would wash backwards and forwards through our mouldering bones, and that would be the end of her, and of those in her who would follow after myths and seek out the secrets of Nature.

Already I seemed to hear the water rippling against the desiccated bones and rattling them together, rolling my skull against Mahomed's, and his against mine, till at last Mahomed's stood straight up upon its vertebræ, and glared at me through its empty eyeholes, and cursed me with its grinning jaws, because I, a dog of a Christian, disturbed the last sleep of a true believer. I opened my eyes, and shuddered at the horrid dream, and then shuddered again at something that was not a dream, for two great eyes were gleaming down at me through the misty darkness. I struggled up, and in my terror and confusion shrieked, and shrieked again, so that the others sprang up too, reeling, and drunken with sleep and fear. And then all of a sudden there was a flash of cold steel, and a great spear was held against my throat, and behind it other spears gleamed cruelly.

"Peace," said a voice, speaking in Arabic, or rather in some dialect into which Arabic entered very largely; "who are ye who come hither swimming on the water? Speak or ye die," and the steel pressed sharply against my throat, sending a cold chill through me.

"We are travellers, and have come hither by chance," I answered in my best Arabic, which appeared to be understood, for the man turned his head, and, addressing a tall form that towered up in the background, said, "Father, shall we slay?"

"What is the colour of the men?" said a deep voice in answer.

"White is their colour."

"Slay not," was the reply. "Four suns since was the word brought to me from 'She-who-must-be-obeyed,' 'White men come; if white men come, slay them not.' Let them be brought to the house of 'She-who-must-be-obeyed.' Bring forth the men, and let that which they have with them be brought forth also."

"Come," said the man, half leading and half dragging me from the boat, and as he did so I perceived other men doing the same kind office to my companions.

On the bank were gathered a company of some fifty men. In that light all I could make out was that they were armed with huge spears, were very tall, and strongly built, comparatively light in colour, and nude, save for a leopard skin tied round the middle.

Presently Leo and Job were bundled out and placed beside me.

"What on earth is up?" said Leo, rubbing his eyes.

"Oh, Lord! sir, here's a rum go," ejaculated Job; and just at that moment a disturbance ensued, and Mahomed came tumbling between us, followed by a shadowy form with an uplifted spear.

"Father, it is a black one," said a voice. "What said 'She-who-must-be-obeyed' about the black one?"

"She said naught; but slay him not. Come hither, my son."

The man advanced, and the tall shadowy form bent forward and whispered something.

"Yes, yes," said the other, and chuckled in a rather blood-curdling tone.

"Are the three white men there?" asked the form.

"Yes, they are there."

"Then bring up that which is made ready for them, and let the men take all that can be brought from the thing which floats."

Hardly had he spoken when men came running up, carrying on their shoulders neither more nor less than palanquins—four bearers and two spare men to a palanquin—and in these it was promptly indicated we were expected to stow ourselves.

"Well!" said Leo, "it is a blessing to find anybody to carry us after having to carry ourselves so long."

Leo always takes a cheerful view of things.

There being no help for it, after seeing the others into theirs I tumbled into my own litter, and very comfortable I found it. It appeared to be manufactured of cloth woven from grass-fibre, which stretched and yielded to every motion of the body, and, being bound top and bottom to the bearing pole, gave a grateful support to the head and neck.

Scarcely had I settled myself when, accompanying their steps with a monotonous song, the bearers started at a swinging trot. For half an hour or so I lay still, reflecting on the very remarkable experiences that we were going through, and wondering if any of my eminently respectable fossil friends down at Cambridge would believe me if I were to be miraculously set at the familiar dinner-table for the purpose of relating them. I do not want to convey any disrespectful notion or slight when I call those good and learned men fossils, but my experience is that people are apt to fossilise even at a University if they follow the same paths too persistently. I was getting fossilised myself, but of late my stock of ideas has been very much enlarged. Well, I lay and reflected, and wondered what on earth would be the end of it all, till at last I ceased to wonder, and went to sleep.

I suppose I must have slept for seven or eight hours, getting the first real rest that I had had since the night before the loss of the dhow, for when I woke the sun was high in the heavens. We were still journeying on at a pace of about four miles an hour. Peeping out through the mist-like curtains of the litter, which were ingeniously fixed to the bearing pole, I perceived to my infinite relief that we had passed out of the region of eternal swamp, and were now travelling over swelling grassy plains towards a cup-shaped hill. Whether or not it was the same hill that we had seen from the canal I do not know, and have never since been able to discover, for, as we afterwards found out, these people will give little information upon such points. Next I glanced at the men who were bearing me. They were of a magnificent build, few of them being under six feet in height, and yellowish in colour. Generally their appearance had a good deal in common with that of the East African Somali, only their hair was not frizzed up, but hung in thick black locks upon their shoulders. Their features were aquiline, and in many cases exceedingly handsome, the teeth being especially regular and beautiful. But notwithstanding their beauty, it struck me that, on the whole, I had never seen a more evil-looking set of faces. There was an aspect of cold and sullen cruelty stamped upon them that revolted me, and which in some cases was almost uncanny in its intensity.

Another thing that struck me about them was that they never seemed to smile. Sometimes they sang the monotonous song of which I have spoken, but when they were not singing they remained almost perfectly silent, and the light of a laugh never came to brighten their sombre and evil countenances. Of what race could these people be? Their language was a bastard Arabic, and yet they were not Arabs; I was quite sure of that. For one thing they were too dark, or rather yellow. I could not say why, but I know that their appearance filled me with a sick fear of which I felt ashamed. While I was still wondering another litter came up alongside of mine. In it—for the curtains were drawn—sat an old man, clothed in a whitish robe, made apparently from coarse linen, that hung loosely about him, who, I at once jumped to the conclusion, was the shadowy figure that had stood on the bank and been addressed as "Father." He was a wonderful-looking old man, with a snowy beard, so long that the ends of it hung over the sides of the litter, and he had a hooked nose, above which flashed out a pair of eyes as keen as a snake's, while his whole countenance was instinct with a look of wise and sardonic humour impossible to describe on paper.

"Art thou awake, stranger?" he said in a deep and low voice.

"Surely, my father," I answered courteously, feeling certain that I should do well to conciliate this ancient Mammon of Unrighteousness.

He stroked his beautiful white beard, and smiled faintly.

"From whatever country thou camest," he said, "and by the way it must be from one where somewhat of our language is known, they teach their children courtesy there, my stranger son. And now wherefore comest thou unto this land, which scarce an alien foot has pressed from the time that man knoweth? Art thou and those with thee weary of life?"

"We came to find new things," I answered boldly. "We are tired of the old things; we have come up out of the sea to know that which is unknown. We are of a brave race who fear not death, my very much respected father—that is, if we can get a little information before we die."

"Humph!" said the old gentleman, "that may be true; it is rash to contradict, otherwise I should say that thou wast lying, my son. However, I dare to say that 'She-who-must-be-obeyed' will meet thy wishes in the matter."

"Who is 'She-who-must-be-obeyed'?" I asked, curiously.

The old man glanced at the bearers, and then answered, with a little smile that somehow sent my blood to my heart—

"Surely, my stranger son, thou wilt learn soon enough, if it be her pleasure to see thee at all in the flesh."

"In the flesh?" I answered. "What may my father wish to convey?"

But the old man only laughed a dreadful laugh, and made no reply.

"What is the name of my father's people?" I asked.

"The name of my people is Amahagger" (the People of the Rocks).

"And if a son might ask, what is the name of my father?"

"My name is Billali."

"And whither go we, my father?"

"That shalt thou see," and at a sign from him his bearers started forward at a run till they reached the litter in which Job was reposing (with one leg hanging over the side). Apparently, however, he could not make much out of Job, for presently I saw his bearers trot forward to Leo's litter.

And after that, as nothing fresh occurred, I yielded to the pleasant swaying motion of the litter, and went to sleep again. I was dreadfully tired. When I woke I found that we were passing through a rocky defile of a lava formation with precipitous sides, in which grew many beautiful trees and flowering shrubs.

Presently this defile took a turn, and a lovely sight unfolded itself to my eyes. Before us was a vast cup of green from four to six miles in extent, in the shape of a Roman amphitheatre. The sides of this great cup were rocky, and clothed with bush, but the centre was of the richest meadow land, studded with single trees of magnificent growth, and watered by meandering brooks. On this rich plain grazed herds of goats and cattle, but I saw no sheep. At first I could not imagine what this strange spot could be, but presently it flashed upon me that it must represent the crater of some long-extinct volcano which had afterwards been a lake, and was ultimately drained in some unexplained way. And here I may state that from my subsequent experience of this and a much larger, but otherwise similar spot, which I shall have occasion to describe by-and-by, I have every reason to believe that this conclusion was correct. What puzzled me, however, was, that although there were people moving about herding the goats and cattle, I saw no signs of any human habitation. Where did they all live? I wondered. My curiosity was soon destined to be gratified. Turning to the left the string of litters followed the cliffy sides of the crater for a distance of about half a mile, or perhaps a little less, and then halted. Seeing the old gentleman, my adopted "father," Billali, emerge from his litter, I did the same, and so did Leo and Job. The first thing I saw was our wretched Arab companion, Mahomed, lying exhausted on the ground. It appeared that he had not been provided with a litter, but had been forced to run the entire distance, and, as he was already quite worn out when we started, his condition now was one of great prostration.

On looking round we discovered that the place where we had halted was a platform in front of the mouth of a great cave, and piled upon this platform were the entire contents of the whale-boat, even down to the oars and sail. Round the cave stood groups of the men who had escorted us, and other men of a similar stamp. They were all tall and all handsome, though they varied in their degree of darkness of skin, some being as dark as Mahomed, and some as yellow as a Chinese. They were naked, except for the leopard-skin round the waist, and each of them carried a huge spear.

There were also some women among them, who, instead of the leopard-skin, wore a tanned hide of a small red buck, something like that of the oribé, only rather darker in colour. These women were, as a class, exceedingly good-looking, with large, dark eyes, well-cut features, and a thick bush of curling hair—not crisped like a negro's—ranging from black to chestnut in hue, with all shades of intermediate colour. Some, but very few of them, wore a yellowish linen garment, such as I have described as worn by Billali, but this, as we afterwards discovered, was a mark of rank, rather than an attempt at clothing. For the rest, their appearance was not quite so terrifying as that of the men, and they sometimes, though rarely, smiled. As soon as we had alighted they gathered round us and examined us with curiosity, but without excitement. Leo's tall, athletic form and clear-cut Grecian face, however, evidently excited their attention, and when he politely lifted his hat to them, and showed his curling yellow hair, there was a slight murmur of admiration. Nor did it stop there; for, after regarding him critically from head to foot, the handsomest of the young women—one wearing a robe, and with hair of a shade between brown and chestnut—deliberately advanced to him, and, in a way that would have been winning had it not been so determined, quietly put her arm round his neck, bent forward, and kissed him on the lips.

I gave a gasp, expecting to see Leo instantly speared; and Job ejaculated, "The hussy—well, I never!" As for Leo, he looked slightly astonished; and then, remarking that we had clearly got into a country where they followed the customs of the early Christians, deliberately returned the embrace.

Again I gasped, thinking that something would happen; but, to my surprise, though some of the young women showed traces of vexation, the older ones and the men only smiled slightly. When we came to understand the customs of this extraordinary people the mystery was explained. It then appeared that, in direct opposition to the habits of almost every other savage race in the world, women among the Amahagger are not only upon terms of perfect equality with the men, but are not held to them by any binding ties. Descent is traced only through the line of the mother, and while individuals are as proud of a long and superior female ancestry as we are of our families in Europe, they never pay attention to, or even acknowledge, any man as their father, even when their male parentage is perfectly well known. There is but one titular male parent of each tribe, or, as they call it, "Household," and he is its elected and immediate ruler, with the title of "Father." For instance, the man Billali was the father of this "household," which consisted of about seven thousand individuals all told, and no other man was ever called by that name. When a woman took a fancy to a man she signified her preference by advancing and embracing him publicly, in the same way that this handsome and exceedingly prompt young lady, who was called Ustane, had embraced Leo. If he kissed her back it was a token that he accepted her, and the arrangement continued until one of them wearied of it. I am bound, however, to say that the change of husbands was not nearly so frequently as might have been expected. Nor did quarrels arise out of it, at least among the men, who, when their wives deserted them in favour of a rival, accepted the whole thing much as we accept the income-tax or our marriage laws, as something not to be disputed, and as tending to the good of the community, however disagreeable they may in particular instances prove to the individual.

It is very curious to observe how the customs of mankind on this matter vary in different countries, making morality an affair of latitude, and what is right and proper in one place wrong and improper in another. It must, however, be understood that, since all civilised nations appear to accept it as an axiom that ceremony is the touchstone of morality, there is, even according to our canons, nothing immoral about this Amahagger custom, seeing that the interchange of the embrace answers to our ceremony of marriage, which, as we know, justifies most things.

VII

USTANE SINGS

When the kissing operation was finished — by the way, none of the young ladies offered to pet me in this fashion, though I saw one hovering round Job, to that respectable individual's evident alarm—the old man Billali advanced, and graciously waved us into the cave, whither we went, followed by Ustane, who did not seem inclined to take the hints I gave her that we liked privacy.

Before we had gone five paces it struck me that the cave that we were entering was none of Nature's handiwork, but, on the contrary, had been hollowed by the hand of man. So far as we could judge it appeared to be about one hundred feet in length by fifty wide, and very lofty, resembling a cathedral aisle more than anything else. From this main aisle opened passages at a distance of every twelve or fifteen feet, leading, I supposed, to smaller chambers. About fifty feet from the entrance of the cave, just where the light began to get dim, a fire was burning, which threw huge shadows upon the gloomy walls around. Here Billali halted, and asked us to be seated, saying that the people would bring us food, and accordingly we squatted ourselves down upon the rugs of skins which were spread for us, and waited. Presently the food, consisting of goat's flesh boiled, fresh milk in an earthenware pot, and boiled cobs of Indian corn, was brought by young girls. We were almost starving, and I do not think that I ever in my life before ate with such satisfaction. Indeed, before we had finished we literally ate up everything that was set before us.

When we had done, our somewhat saturnine host, Billali, who had been watching us in perfect silence, rose and addressed us. He said that it was a wonderful thing that had happened. No man had ever known or heard of white strangers arriving in the country of the People of the Rocks. Sometimes, though rarely, black men had come here, and from them they had heard of the existence of men much whiter than themselves, who sailed on the sea in ships, but for the arrival of such there was no precedent. We had, however, been seen dragging the boat up the canal, and he told us frankly that he had at once given orders for our destruction, seeing that it was unlawful for any stranger to enter here, when a message had come from "She-who-must-be-obeyed," saying that our lives were to be spared, and that we were to be brought hither.

"Pardon me, my father," I interrupted at this point; "but if, as I understand, 'She-who-must-be-obeyed' lives yet farther off, how could she have known of our approach?"

Billali turned, and seeing that we were alone—for the young lady, Ustane, had withdrawn when he had begun to speak—said, with a curious little laugh—

"Are there none in your land who can see without eyes and hear without ears? Ask no questions; She knew."

I shrugged my shoulders at this, and he proceeded to say that no further instructions had been received on the subject of our disposal, and this being so he was about to start to interview "She-who-must-be-obeyed," generally spoken of, for the sake of brevity, as "Hiya" or She simply, who he gave us to understand was the Queen of the Amahagger, and learn her wishes.

I asked him how long he proposed to be away, and he said that by travelling hard he might be back on the fifth day, but there were many miles of marsh to cross before he came to where SheShe would be one favourable to the continuation of our existence, but at the same time he did not wish to conceal from us that he thought this doubtful, as every stranger who had ever come into the country during his grandmother's life, his mother's life, and his own life, had been put to death without mercy, and in a way he would not harrow our feelings by describing; and this had been done by the order of She herself, at least he supposed that it was by her order. At any rate, she never interfered to save them. was. He then said that every arrangement would be made for our comfort during his absence, and that, as he personally had taken a fancy to us, he sincerely trusted that the answer he should bring from

"Why," I said, "but how can that be? You are an old man, and the time you talk of must reach back three men's lives. How therefore could She have ordered the death of anybody at the beginning of the life of your grandmother, seeing that herself she would not have been born?"

Again he smiled—that same faint, peculiar smile, and with a deep bow departed, without making any answer; nor did we see him again for five days.

When we had gone we discussed the situation, which filled me with alarm. I did not at all like the accounts of this mysterious Queen, "She-who-must-be-obeyed," or more shortly She, who apparently ordered the execution of any unfortunate stranger in a fashion so unmerciful. Leo, too, was depressed about it, but consoled himself by triumphantly pointing out that this She was undoubtedly the person referred to in the writing on the potsherd and in his father's letter, in proof of which he advanced Billali's allusions to her age and power. I was by this time too overwhelmed with the whole course of events that I had not even the heart left to dispute a proposition so absurd, so I suggested that we should try to go out and get a bath, of which we all stood sadly in need.

Accordingly, having indicated our wish to a middle-aged individual of an unusually saturnine cast of countenance, even among this saturnine people, who appeared to be deputed to look after us now that the Father of the hamlet had departed, we started in a body—having first lit our pipes. Outside the cave we found quite a crowd of people evidently watching for our appearance, but when they saw us come out smoking they vanished this way and that, calling out that we were great magicians. Indeed, nothing about us created so great a sensation as our tobacco smoke—not even our firearms.[*] After this we succeeded in reaching a stream that had its source in a strong ground spring, and taking our bath in peace, though some of the women, not excepting Ustane, showed a decided inclination to follow us even there.

[*] We found tobacco growing in this country as it does in every other part of Africa, and, although they were so absolutely ignorant of its other blessed qualities, the Amahagger use it habitually in the form of snuff and also for medicinal purposes.—L. H. H.

By the time that we had finished this most refreshing bath the sun was setting; indeed, when we got back to the big cave it had already set. The cave itself was full of people gathered round fires—for several more had now been lighted—and eating their evening meal by their lurid light, and by that of various lamps which were set about or hung upon the walls. These lamps were of a rude manufacture of baked earthenware, and of all shapes, some of them graceful enough. The larger ones were formed of big red earthenware pots, filled with clarified melted fat, and having a reed wick stuck through a wooden disk which filled the top of the pot. This sort of lamp required the most constant attention to prevent its going out whenever the wick burnt down, as there were no means of turning it up. The smaller hand lamps, however, which were also made of baked clay, were fitted with wicks manufactured from the pith of a palm-tree, or sometimes from the stem of a very handsome variety of fern. This kind of wick was passed through a round hole at the end of the lamp, to which a sharp piece of hard wood was attached wherewith to pierce and draw it up whenever it showed signs of burning low.

For a while we sat down and watched this grim people eating their evening meal in silence as grim as themselves, till at length, getting tired of contemplating them and the huge moving shadows on the rocky walls, I suggested to our new keeper that we should like to go to bed.

Without a word he rose, and, taking me politely by the hand, advanced with a lamp to one of the small passages that I had noticed opening out of the central cave. This we followed for about five paces, when it suddenly widened out into a small chamber, about eight feet square, and hewn out of the living rock. On one side of this chamber was a stone slab, about three feet from the ground, and running its entire length like a bunk in a cabin, and on this slab he intimated that I was to sleep. There was no window or air-hole to the chamber, and no furniture; and, on looking at it more closely, I came to the disturbing conclusion (in which, as I afterwards discovered, I was quite right) that it had originally served for a sepulchre for the dead rather than a sleeping-place for the living, the slab being designed to receive the corpse of the departed. The thought made me shudder in spite of myself; but, seeing that I must sleep somewhere, I got over the feeling as best I might, and returned to the cavern to get my blanket, which had been brought up from the boat with the other things. There I met Job, who, having been inducted to a similar apartment, had flatly declined to stop in it, saying that the look of the place gave him the horrors, and that he might as well be dead and buried in his grandfather's brick grave at once, and expressed his determination of sleeping with me if I would allow him. This, of course, I was only too glad to do.

The night passed very comfortably on the whole. I say on the whole, for personally I went through a most horrible nightmare of being buried alive, induced, no doubt, by the sepulchral nature of my surroundings. At dawn we were aroused by a loud trumpeting sound, produced, as we afterwards discovered, by a young Amahagger blowing through a hole bored in its side into a hollowed elephant tusk, which was kept for the purpose.

Taking the hint, we got up and went down to the stream to wash, after which the morning meal was served. At breakfast one of the women, no longer quite young, advanced and publicly kissed Job. I think it was in its way the most delightful thing (putting its impropriety aside for a moment) that I ever saw. Never shall I forget the respectable Job's abject terror and disgust. Job, like myself, is a bit of a misogynist—I fancy chiefly owing to the fact of his having been one of a family of seventeen—and the feelings expressed upon his countenance when he realised that he was not only being embraced publicly, and without authorisation on his own part, but also in the presence of his masters, were too mixed and painful to admit of accurate description. He sprang to his feet, and pushed the woman, a buxom person of about thirty, from him.

"Well, I never!" he gasped, whereupon probably thinking that he was only coy, she embraced him again.

"Be off with you! Get away, you minx!" he shouted, waving the wooden spoon, with which he was eating his breakfast, up and down before the lady's face. "Beg your pardon, gentlemen, I am sure I haven't encouraged her. Oh, Lord! she's coming for me again. Hold her, Mr. Holly! please hold her! I can't stand it; I can't, indeed. This has never happened to me before, gentlemen, never. There's nothing against my character," and here he broke off, and ran as hard as he could go down the cave, and for once I saw the Amahagger laugh. As for the woman, however, she did not laugh. On the contrary, she seemed to bristle with fury, which the mockery of the other women about only served to intensify. She stood there literally snarling and shaking with indignation, and, seeing her, I wished Job's scruples had been at Jericho, forming a shrewd guess that his admirable behaviour had endangered our throats. Nor, as the sequel shows, was I wrong.

The lady having retreated, Job returned in a great state of nervousness, and keeping his weather eye fixed upon every woman who came near him. I took an opportunity to explain to our hosts that Job was a married man, and had had very unhappy experiences in his domestic relations, which accounted for his presence here and his terror at the sight of women, but my remarks were received in grim silence, it being evident that our retainer's behaviour was considered as a slight to the "household" at large, although the women, after the manner of some of their most civilised sisters, made merry at the rebuff of their companion.

After breakfast we took a walk and inspected the Amahagger herds, and also their cultivated lands. They have two breeds of cattle, one large and angular, with no horns, but yielding beautiful milk; and the other, a red breed, very small and fat, excellent for meat, but of no value for milking purposes. This last breed closely resembles the Norfolk red-pole strain, only it has horns which generally curve forward over the head, sometimes to such an extent that they have to be cut to prevent them from growing into the bones of the skull. The goats are long-haired, and are used for eating only, at least I never saw them milked. As for the Amahagger cultivation, it is primitive in the extreme, being all done by means of a spade made of iron, for these people smelt and work iron. This spade is shaped more like a big spear-head than anything else, and has no shoulder to it on which the foot can be set. As a consequence, the labour of digging is very great. It is, however, all done by the men, the women, contrary to the habits of most savage races, being entirely exempt from manual toil. But then, as I think I have said elsewhere, among the Amahagger the weaker sex has established its rights.

At first we were much puzzled as to the origin and constitution of this extraordinary race, points upon which they were singularly uncommunicative. As the time went on—for the next four days passed without any striking event—we learnt something from Leo's lady friend Ustane, who, by the way, stuck to that young gentleman like his own shadow. As to origin, they had none, at least, so far as she was aware. There were, however, she informed us, mounds of masonry and many pillars, near the place where She lived, which was called Kôr, and which the wise said had once been houses wherein men lived, and it was suggested that they were descended from these men. No one, however, dared go near these great ruins, because they were haunted: they only looked on them from a distance. Other similar ruins were to be seen, she had heard, in various parts of the country, that is, wherever one of the mountains rose above the level of the swamp. Also the caves in which they lived had been hollowed out of the rocks by men, perhaps the same who built the cities. They themselves had no written laws, only custom, which was, however, quite as binding as law. If any man offended against the custom, he was put to death by order of the Father of the "Household." I asked how he was put to death, and she only smiled and said that I might see one day soon.

They had a Queen, however. She was their Queen, but she was very rarely seen, perhaps once in two or three years, when she came forth to pass sentence on some offenders, and when seen was muffled up in a big cloak, so that nobody could look upon her face. Those who waited upon her were deaf and dumb, and therefore could tell no tales, but it was reported that she was lovely as no other woman was lovely, or ever had been. It was rumoured also that she was immortal, and had power over all things, but she, Ustane, could say nothing of all that. What she believed was that the Queen chose a husband from time to time, and as soon as a female child was born, this husband, who was never again seen, was put to death. Then the female child grew up and took the place of the Queen when its mother died, and had been buried in the great caves. But of these matters none could speak with certainty. Only She was obeyed throughout the length and breadth of the land, and to question her command was instant death. She kept a guard, but had no regular army, and to disobey her was to die.

I asked what size the land was, and how many people lived in it. She answered that there were ten "Households," like this that she knew of, including the big "Household," where the Queen was, that all the "Households" lived in caves, in places resembling this stretch of raised country, dotted about in a vast extent of swamp, which was only to be threaded by secret paths. Often the "Households" made war on each other until She sent word that it was to stop, and then they instantly ceased. That and the fever which they caught in crossing the swamps prevented their numbers from increasing too much. They had no connection with any other race, indeed none lived near them, or were able to thread the vast swamps. Once an army from the direction of the great river (presumably the Zambesi) had attempted to attack them, but they got lost in the marshes, and at night, seeing the great balls of fire that move about there, tried to come to them, thinking that they marked the enemy camp, and half of them were drowned. As for the rest, they soon died of fever and starvation, not a blow being struck at them. The marshes, she told us, were absolutely impassable except to those who knew the paths, adding, what I could well believe, that we should never have reached this place where we then were had we not been brought thither.

These and many other things we learnt from Ustane during the four days' pause before our real adventures began, and, as may be imagined, they gave us considerable cause for thought. The whole thing was exceedingly remarkable, almost incredibly so, indeed, and the oddest part of it was that so far it did more or less correspond to the ancient writing on the sherd. And now it appeared that there was a mysterious Queen clothed by rumour with dread and wonderful attributes, and commonly known by the impersonal, but, to my mind, rather awesome title of She. Altogether, I could not make it out, nor could Leo, though of course he was exceedingly triumphant over me because I had persistently mocked at the whole thing. As for Job, he had long since abandoned any attempt to call his reason his own, and left it to drift upon the sea of circumstance. Mahomed, the Arab, who was, by the way, treated civilly indeed, but with chilling contempt, by the Amahagger, was, I discovered, in a great fright, though I could not quite make out what he was frightened about. He would sit crouched up in a corner of the cave all day long, calling upon Allah and the Prophet to protect him. When I pressed him about it, he said that he was afraid because these people were not men or women at all, but devils, and that this was an enchanted land; and, upon my word, once or twice since then I have been inclined to agree with him. And so the time went on, till the night of the fourth day after Billali had left, when something happened.

We three and Ustane were sitting round a fire in the cave just before bedtime, when suddenly the woman, who had been brooding in silence, rose, and laid her hand upon Leo's golden curls, and addressed him. Even now, when I shut my eyes, I can see her proud, imperial form, clothed alternately in dense shadow and the red flickering of the fire, as she stood, the wild centre of as weird a scene as I ever witnessed, and delivered herself of the burden of her thoughts and forebodings in a kind of rhythmical speech that ran something as follows:—

Thou art my chosen—I have waited for thee from the beginning! Thou art very beautiful. Who hath hair like unto thee, or skin so white? Who hath so strong an arm, who is so much a man? Thine eyes are the sky, and the light in them is the stars. Thou art perfect and of a happy face, and my heart turned itself towards thee. Ay, when mine eyes fell upon thee I did desire thee,— Then did I take thee to me—oh, thou Beloved, And hold thee fast, lest harm should come unto thee. Ay, I did cover thine head with mine hair, lest the sun should strike it; And altogether was I thine, and thou wast altogether mine. And so it went for a little space, till Time was in labour with an evil Day; And then what befell on that day? Alas! my Beloved, I know not! But I, I saw thee no more—I, I was lost in the blackness. And she who is stronger did take thee; ay, she who is fairer than Ustane. Yet didst thou turn and call upon me, and let thine eyes wander in the darkness. But, nevertheless, she prevailed by Beauty, and led thee down horrible places,

And then, ah! then my Beloved——

Here this extraordinary woman broke off her speech, or chant, which was so much musical gibberish to us, for all that we understood of what she was talking about, and seemed to fix her flashing eyes upon the deep shadow before her. Then in a moment they acquired a vacant, terrified stare, as though they were striving to realise some half-seen horror. She lifted her hand from Leo's head, and pointed into the darkness. We all looked, and could see nothing; but she saw something, or thought she did, and something evidently that affected even her iron nerves, for, without another sound, down she fell senseless between us.

Leo, who was growing really attached to this remarkable young person, was in a great state of alarm and distress, and I, to be perfectly candid, was in a condition not far removed from superstitious fear. The whole scene was an uncanny one.

Presently, however, she recovered, and sat up with an extraordinary convulsive shudder.

"Nay, my chosen," she answered, with a little forced laugh. "I did but sing unto thee after the fashion of my people. Surely, I meant nothing. Now could I speak of that which is not yet?"

"And what didst thou see, Ustane?" I asked, looking her sharply in the face.

"Nay," she answered again, "I saw naught. Ask me not what I saw. Why should I fright ye?" And then, turning to Leo with a look of the most utter tenderness that I ever saw upon the face of a woman, civilised or savage, she took his head between her hands, and kissed him on the forehead as a mother might.

"When I am gone from thee, my chosen," she said; "when at night thou stretchest out thine hand and canst not find me, then shouldst thou think at times of me, for of a truth I love thee well, though I be not fit to wash thy feet. And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been. To-night the hours are our own, how know we to whom they shall belong to-morrow?"

03 October 2009

Bob's Road Trip Adventure in the last days of September 2009, just at the beginning of the changing colors of the leaves of the great boreal deciduous hardwood forest of North America.

I'm posting on the laptop off the Wi-Fi at the Whately Truck Stop Diner on Interstate 91 in Massachusetts. We're temporarily de-homed -- not homeless, which is an authentic tragedy. We're just de-homed for about 3 days. We are Between Homes. At this moment a bunch of Todds and Scotts and Marks are schlepping and trucking all our crap and books and drek and weird belongings (the neon Jolt Cola sign, the Oscilloscope, the Analog Computer, the rotating illuminating Marvy Barber Pole ...) from the old house in Northampton to the new house in the woods at 42.3579° N 72.8313° W. In a recent post you can see our new house from low Earth orbit (or probably just a survey photo airplane).

S.W.M.B.O. just vibrated my groin where my cell phone was in my pocket and told me the ghastly move will take one more day than planned, so I got to see if we can book a third night at the gorgeous Whately Inn. The Whately Inn is probably the most magnificent place to stay to see the Autumn foliage. Peak Leaf Peeper Season is coming up, the Columbus Day weekend. We're mega-positioned for it, and have dinner reservations in front of the fireplace tonight. It's just possible the Whately Inn serves the finest dinner on Earth. Ten years ago we had our wedding reception there. This is The Fantasy of the New England Inn, and a lot of the staff are learning the tops in the restaurant business as they get hospitality industry degrees at the nearby University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Yesterday our mailman saw our Change of Address form and asked us about it. I burst into tears, and embarrassed the poor man. I've lived in this little cottage for 26 years. Some of my cats are buried in the back yard.

Please wish me well as I gobble pills to get me through this authentically terrible ordeal. I know others have it much worse -- the authentically homeless who must sleep in the woods, the people of Indonesia and Samoa.

But this is so very hard for me. I'll write about my wonderful 844-mile International Boreal Decidiuous Hardwood Forest Adventure when I calm down a little. I met an Indian Nation Chief! We talked! She answered my 500 ignorant stupid questions about the St. Francis Abenaki Nation! Go HERE to the Abenaki Nation website, read about some History!